86 . THE NEW YORKER ....... ... ........ ... ... ... ... .... .... .... ... ... .eo. ... Use au r weekly ':} f .................. ::::}Ii$!fng. ? d i a I d ire c t I y !}o a d ve r tis e r s. fll:::::::::::; fro man ::::!,:h:J-'il]g::::::::::::::: '. reach pro d u eTa J.. r.::I!:!:j;!!::ju service representl!ll!pr :}::;': The Autry Resort Hotel and Racquet Club The legendary glamour of Palm Springs is here at The Autry 1-800-443-6328 Stewart Home School A year-round residential facility for mentally handicapped children and adults Frankfort, Kentucky 1-502-227 -4821 Puerto Rico Discover the New Old World 1 -800-866-STAR Michael A. Merrill Estate Sterling Silver Flatware Free Catalog 1-800-441-2520 Giorgio Beverly Hills, Inc. Free brochure and bonus gift with purchase 1 -800-GIORGIO Ext. 467 ADVERTI5EMENT .,.. tYt.) -;ø.L' ... forced against their natural inclina- tions into paying for private treatment. Like the best commercials-and un- like most political broadcasts-it told its story in images, without voice-over. Two small girls, each with the same 1 . f " 1 " h comp aInt 0 g ue ear, go to t e same crowded hospital; both need surgery, and their mothers are told of a nine- month wait for the necessary operation to insert plastic grommets. (You can't, of course, convey such concepts as " 1 " d " ". d g ue ear an grommets In a wor - less film; but within twenty- four hours of its showing, most people in the land were speak- ing familiarly of such matters.) One mother pays to have her daughter treated privately, the other waits for the nine months to elapse; one child quickly recovers, the other continues in pain, becoming both withdrawn and aggressive at school. While the second child is suffer- ing, the mother of the first is seen contentedly signing a check for two hundred pounds. The story ends with a freeze-frame of the two girls in upper and lower bunk beds; superimposed is the slogan "It's their future- Don't let it end in tiers." The film was an excellent pIece of agitprop, making its point economi- cally while shamelessly playing on our emotions. Conservatives had known before the election that they were vulnerable on health; William Walde- grave, the Health Secretary, wrote to national newspaper editors at the be- ginning of the campaign, pointing out that "the eXploitation of individual cases where the NHS is alleged to have failed a patient is the preferred method of campaigning by Labour." He fur- ther expressed the hope that the press would not "allow this new and ruth- less form of health campaigning to pass unchallenged," adding, "It would be another ratchet down in electoral standards if it did." Such heavy-handed advice betokened high anxiety. News- papers like to be ethically outraged on their own behalf, without ministerial prompting; and, in the event, their interpretations of the need to "chal- lenge" the Labour broadcast varied. How, indeed, might you "challenge" it if you wished to do so? You might, for instance, condemn the eXploitative use of children, even if only child actors, in political commercials-the Conservative Party chairman, Chris Patten, for instance, called the film MAY 4, 1992 " k " (h h d ' . h . tac yea n t seen it at t e tIme, but that was neither here nor there). Or you might take the events outlined in the commercial, investigate the fre- quency of glue ear, the average wait- ing time for an operation, the effects of such a wait on the child's psycho- logical condition, and the cost of pri- vate treatment, and then decide whether or not to challenge the broadcast. That is, of course, fairly pedantic, though some newspapers followed this line, and seemed to establish the general truth of the film, except that the cost of the operation was more likely to be between five hundred and seven hundred and fifty pounds (the two- hundred-pound check probably being just for the surgeon's fee), thus making Labour's point even better. But newspapers do not, on the whole, operate in this fashion. The question they asked in response to a political row about a fictionalized in- fant was depressingly basic: Who is she? And she turned out (very quickly, with the help of a leak) to be five-year- old Jennifer Bennett, of F aversham, in Kent, whose father had written to the Shadow Minister for Health, Robin Cook, to complain about his daughter's laggardly treatment. But the newspapers also discovered that reality is messier than a TV commer- cial. For if Jennifer's father was a disgruntled floating voter, his wife was a Conservative, and her father turned out to be a former Tory mayor of Faversham and friend of the sitting M.P. Worse, he had faxed the Con- servative Central Office more than a week before the broadcast, warning of Labour's plans and disagreeing with his son-in-law's interpretation of events. The War of Jennifer's Ear, as it swiftly became known, dominated the election coverage for several days. J en- nifer Bennett was on the front page of every paper, even the Times; the fam- ily was endlessly doorstepped; the grandfather, in a moment of pure soap, even burst in on a TV interview with his son-in-law. "Is it true?" had quickly lost out to "Who is she?," which in turn gave way to "Who leaked what?" Did Kinnock's press secretary divulge the girl's name? Did Walde grave's office put the surgeon who conduct- ed the operation in touch with the Daily Express? And was Jennifer's case just a simple administrative error, as was now claimed, rather than a direct